Discarded: How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate Legacy

What kind of fossils will we leave, as relics into the far future? A blizzard of new objects has suddenly appeared on Earth: plastic bottles, ballpoint pens, concrete flyways, chicken bones, cans, teabags, phones, shirts. They're produced for our comfort and pleasure then quickly discarded. This new-made treasure chest underpins our lives. But it is also giving a completely new style of fossilization to our planet. Designed to resist corrosion and decay, many will remain, petrified, as future geology.

What will these technofossils look like? How long will they last and how will they change? Discarded describes how they transform and what will be left of them. These new fossils have meaning for our lives today. For we live on a world increasingly buried under our growing waste. As our discarded artefacts begin to change into fossils, they may be swallowed by birds, entangle fish, alter microbial communities and release toxins. Even buried in rock, technofossils may break down into new-formed oil and gas, change the composition of groundwater, and attract new mineral growths.

It is a new planetary phenomenon, now unfolding around us. Scientists are only just beginning to grasp its scale, and get to grips with how it functions. This book describes the kind of science that is emerging to show the far-future human footprint on Earth.

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Release date

Audiobook: 15 May 2025